The Story of 2017 (Part 2)

Life in the New Stone Age (upper image; source). Life in the Old Stone Age (lower image; source). The Neolithic era, or New Stone Age, started with the move from hunter-gatherer life to agriculture, lasted just a few thousand years, and ended with the discovery and use of metals. The Paleolithic era, or Old Stone Age, lasted many millions of years before it. We're on our way back through the later Neolithic era to the earlier one.

by Gaius Publius

2017 has been an such unusual year in so many ways that its unusuality has masked the ways in which it has been a very usual year, a very much more-of-the-same series of months. This piece continues our look at 2017 through the most significant pieces we've written last year.

Part 1 is here, with a longer introduction to the year itself. Briefly, these have been the themes of the year:

     • The feckless Democrats, who seem to insist on throwing away a perfectly good opportunity to make a new first impression, to clean-sweep a political return in a country aching for actual political change.

     • The Republican Party, attempting at last to "win absolutely" after generations spent combatting the New Deal, the Great Society, and that Party's most hated phrase in the U.S. Constitution — "promote the general welfare."

     • The continuation of the failed electoral revolt of 2016, which saw its one real champion lose, defeated by his own party, and its one fake champion win.

     • The next phase in the Praetorian Guard-ization of the security state, which is working overtime to unseat an unfit, though elected president. (Do you really think Russia is the only foreign power to ever influence an American election? If you do, you haven't been paying attention.)

     • And finally, the relentless devolutionary march to the Old Stone Age as the last, minimal window of escape from a world-historical change in climate closes as we watch.

These were the stories of 2017 from the perspective of our seat at the Chair by the Window.

The Story of 2017, Part 2

Without further ado, here is the rest of our list, eleven further pieces of writing that defined the year for us.

May 22 — The Dying Fossil Fuel Industry

Big Oil has a fatal disease, two of them in fact, and either or both are going to end its life as an industry. The only real question for us is not when the industry collapses, but how it collapses.

A sudden collapse that happens fairly quickly would also be chaotic, but that may not be bad, all things considered. Imagine what could happen in the country and the world if oil prices fall to, say, $25 per barrel from today's price of about $50 per barrel. Smaller fossil fuel companies would disappear as suddenly as firefly light on a hot summer evening. The industry would be in economic turmoil, desperate for funding.

You can almost hear the cries for even greater government subsidies, added to the already massive global subsidies it now receives, $1.82 trillion, or 3.8 percent of global GDP. This would amount to our next big national bailout after the Wall Street bailout of 2009, as before with taxpayer money.

Would Americans foot the bill for a second massive bailout, so soon after the first? Would they do it if Big Oil is the recipient? I think the political chaos surrounding that public discussion would be deadly to Big Oil all on its own.

A chaotic event as well, yes, but also very welcome from a climate change standpoint.

June 15 — The Collapsing Social Contract

America's most abundant manufactured product may be pain. 

August 7 — There Is No "Political Center" in Modern America

If there are no voters in the political "center," a strategy based on winning them is likely to fail. So why pursue it? Perhaps because voters aren't what the Democratic Party, or either American political party these days, is pursuing. Perhaps it's because what both parties are actually pursuing ... is money.

September 28 — The American Flag and What It Stands For

During the Nixon era, enemies of Vietnam War protestors and draft dodgers appropriated the flag as a symbol of their own aggression and anger — anger at "the hippies"; at free love (which to a man they envied); at "unpatriotic" protests against the nation's wrongdoing; at anything and anyone who didn't rejoice, in essence, in the macho, patriarchal, authoritarian demands for obedience to right-wing leaders like Richard Nixon.

That's not an overstatement, and everyone reading this knows it. Why do cops wear flags on their uniforms, for example, but not nurses? Ignore the cover-story explanations and ask, is it "national pride" and patriotism the police are expressing, or something closer to their authoritarian anger?

October 2 — Capitalism, Infinite Growth, Climate Change & Manufactured Hopelessness

Why do we see so little move toward positive change, and so much shrinking into simple fear? Militarized late-stage capitalism, targeting a single end — its self defense. As David Graeber noted, "the last thirty years have seen the construction of a vast bureaucratic apparatus for the creation and maintenance of hopelessness, a giant machine designed, first and foremost, to destroy any sense of possible alternative futures."

October 19 — European Colonialism Is the Central Fact of Politics on Earth

What we did, we do — in our Ferguson-like neighborhoods; in our innocence-be-damned, glory-in-punishment courts and prisons; in abandoned storm-torn Puerto Rico; in our eager, invisible bombings and dronings throughout the Middle East and into Asia; in our happy, unironic interference in every election on earth we care about; and so much more.

International colonizing by Western Europe and its Sun King offspring, the United States, is entirely invisible to its perpetrators.

Yet nothing about the state of the world today — from a nearly inevitable climate change disaster to wealth inequality beyond the dreams of avarice — can be understood without accounting for the invisible celebrations of rape and plunder that underpin everything done by the West to the rest of the world.

October 26 — Defining Neoliberalism

In a world where competition is right and good, a world in which the "market" is the defining metaphor for human activity, all social ties are broken, the individual is an atom left to survive as an individual only, the strongest relentlessly consume the weakest — and that's as it should be. It's easy to imagine how the apex predators of our social order would be attracted to this, and insist on it with force.

Thus the bipartisan world we live in today. Under a neoliberal regime, everyone gets what they deserve. Big fish deserve their meal. Little fish deserve their death. And government sets the table for the feast.

October 30 — The Resistance, the #Resistance and Harvey Weinstein

There's something greatly troubling about what the media-fronted #Resistance has morphed into, but I'm having trouble writing about it (it's lightly touched here: "A Nation in Crisis, Again"). Partly the problem is the marshaling of pages of proof; partly the problem is the unstoppable train wreck that's coming. Perhaps I should write about the train wreck instead.

After all, no Praetorian Guard, once it grows muscular, reverts back to a simple barracks unit just because new leadership arrives. And the anti-Trump leadership in both parties is growing us a Praetorian Guard, if we don't have one already. You may be cheering it onward as we speak, but what you're cheering, if you do, enables an unelected, uncontrolled, muscular security state, one you've certainly been appalled by in many other contexts.

Trump will go; but the unelected state grows only stronger, now with help from the #Resistance. Do you see the dilemma? How to write about this to a nation in love with what it will come, but only later, to hate?

November 27 — The Building Is Burning and All the World’s Babies Are In It — Using Force to Fight Climate Change

Just as the climate disaster is and will be a rolling nightmare, advancing from frontier to frontier in its destruction — meaning, it won't all happen at once, but in stages — so is disaster mitigation a rolling series of preventions that can knock off the worst climate effects one by one. But only if we act.

Any number of mitigating events could and will happen in the next 10 years, events that won't cancel climate consequences — that ship has sailed — but that could offset a great many of those effects still in doubt. In that sense, it's not "already over" — that's way too digital, too all-or-nothing an analysis. It's only "already over" if no one acts at all, and that's just not what's happening. That's encouraging.

It's also encouraging that the real (and so far failed) Resistance, which started with Occupy and continued through the 2016 election, has not ended. That fight — against Rule by the Rich — is also the climate fight. 

December 4 — Deficit Talk Is a Trap. Will Democrats Fall Into It?

Government spending is good. It's the way a government that controls its own currency puts money into the economy, making it possible for you and me to buy things. The question isn't, Should government spend money at all? If government spent no money, you would have none yourself. The question is, Whom should the government spend money on — you or the already rich?

Will Democrats take the Republican bait and agree that just their donors deserve largesse? Or will they finally learn the lesson of the Failed Revolt of 2016 and spend to benefit their voters as well? The Tax Cut bill of 2017 sets up this trap. Will Democrats walk into it?

December 18 — What Would Happen If Sanders Ran for President in 2020?

A look into the farther political future, all the way to 2020. If Sanders ran again, or a credible, not money-owned, Sanders-like candidate ran in his place, how would he or she be treated? I'm not talking about a Sanders-lite, or a Sanders-masked neoliberal, but an actual threat to the status quo, as Sanders was. Eight questions about how he would be treated by the Party and the press — in the primary, in the general election, and finally if he won the presidency.

A Year of Consequences

Thus ended, for us, the year of consequences, 2017, the year that followed the crossroads year of 2016.

When we think of climate crossroads, many of us think of the election of 1980, an election that Reagan arguably stole from a man who would have put us on course to address — with just enough time to do it — the emerging climate emergency.

When we think of economic crossroads, those who don't regret the failed Obama opportunity of 2009 — he had an FDR Congress, an FDR crisis, an FDR popular mandate, and laid them all at the feet of his donor class — those of us without Obama on our minds think of Sanders, Clinton and Trump; the Failed Revolt of 2016; and the road not allowed to be taken.

Our betters chose another path for us, and the rest, I'm afraid, will merely be consequences, the train wreck mentioned above, easily foreseen. Perhaps we won't write about the train wreck after all, but something less widely anticipated. History, after all, doesn't end with the Trump-and-Pence presidency. That's just where its next phase starts.

GP
  

The Story of 2017 (Part 1)

by Gaius Publius

2017 has been an such unusual year in so many ways that its unusuality has masked the ways in which it has been a very usual year, a very more-of-the-same series of months.

For one thing, "The Resistance" has gone from being a meaningful idea to something almost seems like it could be added to anything to indicate added value — "Dove soap, now with #Resistance." I've seen "resistance" claims from those who fought to keep the oligarchy in check during the primary, and from those who fight today to enhance the oligarchy's grip after it (I could mention some fervently pro-corporate Democrats I get incessant mailings from).

Almost like the phrase "fake news," which was immediately so overused it became meaningless less than four days after it was created, "The Resistance" hides a disturbing fact — that while we may be witnessing an enhanced and crueler version of your daddy's Republicans, we are not witnessing an enlightened, more "woke" set of mainstream Democrats.

The only thing that's "woke" about those who (still) hold power in the Party ... is the new coat of branding that asks you to think they are.

Trump may himself be new, in that he took the election by running as Bernie Sanders — a candidate the entire Democratic Party seemed united to destroy during the primary. But the only thing new about the response to Trump, to these eyes, is the unified ad campaign — by the Democratic Party establishment, the national security establishment, and the press — to (a) unseat Trump; and (b) restore an acceptable Establishment candidate to power.

That "acceptable Establishment candidate," by the way, may well be Mike Pence, at least in the eyes of two of the three establishments listed above. Sorry Democrats. Letting the CIA bed you doesn't guarantee you girlfriend status in the morning. Nice try, though.

The Story of 2017

All of this is intro to the following list of my favorite "GP" posts of 2017, my sideways view of the melange of battles we witnessed during the year, including:

     • The mainstream Democratic Party's only occasional "resistance," and their attempt to restore their own worst elements to power while pretending to have "woke."

     • The Republican Party's attempt to use the Trump presidency to "win absolutely," end the New Deal forever, destroy all government-mandated environmentalism and dismantle entirely the Roosevelt regulatory state. In short, their hard and constant push to deliver the wettest of wet dreams to the billionaire octogenarians they serve.

     • The national security establishment's increasingly obvious attempt to rid itself of the occasionally heterodox ("Who needs NATO?") elected president it pretends to serve and report to.

     • The country's (so far failed) attempt to say to its ruling establishments, "Please please please, won't someone serve our needs?" A cry so far unheard.

     • The maybe-fatal implications of all the above.

     • Oh ... and the almost certain, easily witnessable birth of the New Old Stone Age thanks to the can both parties are kicking down the road, if not crushing under foot as they resolutely march toward the cliff. I mean, of course, a real response to the coming, almost certain, easily witnessable worldwide climate disaster.

The List that Tells the Story (Part 1)

So, without further ado, part one of the story of 2017, at least as witnessed by the writer in the chair by the window. (Part two will appear next time.)

January 5 — What Democrats Failed to Do on January 3

What they failed to do, of course, is to use the power they briefly had to undo Merrick Garland's Supreme Court appointment. Yes, they could have done it. Do you wonder why they didn't?

January 11 — Obama's Other Legacy: "The Greatest Disintegration of Black Wealth in Recent Memory" 

The Party considers Obama a saint and a savior. It's the greatest triumph of branding since Bill Clinton. Clinton's brand seems to be teetering though. Will Obama's similarly wobble, or will he enter his own sunset years un-reexamined?

January 12 — Who’s Blackmailing the President & Why Aren't  Democrats Upset About It?

Our first look at Trump and his adventures with the national security state he ostensibly leads. Not our last look though. That story continues. 

January 25 — Mike Pompeo, Torture and the Future of the Democratic Party

The Party's second chance, a blown one of course, to make a new first impression. And we're not out of January yet.

February 27 — Obama and the Perez Election — Are the Democrats Trying to Fail?

Yet another chance for mainstream Democrats, let by Obama himself, to show where they stand, to choose between controlling the Party or serving the nation. Do they think the nation's independent voters aren't watching? (Yes, they do think that.)

March 23 — The State of the Climate in 2017: "Truly Uncharted Territory"

A starting point for a theme we came back to. This political generation thinks it can kick the climate can down to the next one, then die with a feeling of righteousness. It can't. It will die in defiance or shame, watching the mess that it itself made unfold around it.

April 6 — The Chevron Decision, the Regulatory State and "Consent of the Governed"

An examination of one of the ways those who control the Republican Party are trying to "win absolutely" — by dismantling absolutely the U.S. regulatory state. This looks at the Supreme Court rulings it wants to overturn, and why.

Thanks to the Democratic Party's unwillingness to unseat Merrick Garland on January 3, the Republicans may well succeed. What can any reasonable person think the outcome of that will be?

May 8 — About the Next Great Crash

A first look at another theme we returned to several more times — the relationship between money creation, private debt, and government enslavement to the financial sector. Because of that combination, most Americans have seen no recovery almost a decade after the last crash. This almost guarantees the next one — and the messy civil war that may well follow.

If you're counting, this will be the second cause of the "rolling civil war" we're already starting to see. I can think of three more we haven't gotten to yet. 

At the heart of this particular problem lies a key: Government creates money and gives it to billionaires whenever it wants to (think of the Iraq War as a $3 trillion gift of newly created dollars to the owners of the corporate military state). If it wanted to, it could create money for other, better purposes — mortgage and student debt relief, free colleges, Medicare for All. If it wanted to.

Making sure you don't see that as a choice is their goal. Making sure you do see that as a choice is ours. This is our first foray of the year in that direction, and not the last. 

May 11 — A Nation in Crisis, Again

A few of my guesses were wrong — a prosecutor was indeed appointed, though no one knows if he will be allowed to remain. But the conclusion is certainly valid:

"This country has had a constitutional crisis every 70 years, after which the government restructured itself. In effect, we have been ruled by three Constitutions, not just one, each producing, in practice, very different governments and societies. We're rapidly producing a crisis that will produce a fourth."

This is also true:

"Whatever happens next, whether Trump is impeached or not, I think we've already been changed as a nation forever by what's already led us to this moment. After all, in 2016 the nation wanted someone like Sanders to be president, wanted an agent of change, and look what it got. This is in fact our second failed attempt this century at change that makes our lives better.

"I don't think that point's been lost on anyone. We're in transition no matter what happens to Trump. Transition to what, we'll have to find out later."

This is an appropriate place to end for now, with a look at where the failed citizen's revolt of 2016 leaves us going forward. The rest of our story of 2017 next time.

GP
 

Best of 2017

John Nichols put together The Nation's annual honor roll a couple of days ago. The video above, by Arcade Fire and Mavis Staples was the pick for Most Valuable Song, "I Give You Power." He wrote that "Protest music made a comeback in 2017. Fiona Apple wrote an anthem for the Women’s March ('We don’t want your tiny hands anywhere near our underpants…'). Bruce Springsteen and former Iron City Houserockers leader Joe Grushecky ripped the new president on 'That’s What Makes Us Great' ('I never put my faith in a con man and his crooks…'). Joey Bada$$ spoke truth to power with 'Land of the Free' ('And Donald Trump is not equipped to take this country over…'). Eminem delivered a freestyle anti-Trump rap that declared: 'Any fan of mine who’s a supporter of his / I’m drawing in the sand a line: You’re either for or against.' But there was something epic-- and refreshingly optimistic-- about the collaboration between Mavis Staples, who’s been singing freedom songs since the civil-rights era, and indie rockers Arcade Fire on 'I Give You Power.' Released on the eve of Trump’s inauguration (with proceeds directed to the American Civil Liberties Union), the song asked, 'Who gives you power? Where do you think it all comes from?' It answered: 'I give you power. I can take it all away.'"

"Resistance." he declared "was the watchword for 2017. Resistance not just to Donald Trump, but to a status quo that gave our most powerful bully pulpit to an actual bully. Progressives not only refused to go backward in 2017; they demanded a new conversation that challenged old orthodoxies." And some of his picks, the ones, basically, I'm pretty much in agreement with:

Most Valuable Senator
ELIZABETH WARREN

When Steve Bannon declared last February that the Trump administration was working toward “the deconstruction of the administrative state,” Warren recognized precisely what was at stake. The senator from Massachusetts knew that while the Trump agenda might frequently be hobbled by GOP disarray in Congress and judicial pushback, it would be advanced by the president’s appointees to cabinet posts and regulatory panels. Warren made it her mission to challenge Trump’s picks. Her diligence (along with that of the unions) helped prevent one of Trump’s worst nominees, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, from becoming labor secretary. Her probing questions in confirmation hearings and searing speeches on the Senate floor so rattled Republicans that they tried to shut her down.

When Warren opposed Trump’s nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general by reading, from the Senate floor, a 1986 statement by Coretta Scott King opposing Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Sessions to serve on the federal bench, majority leader Mitch McConnell rushed to silence her. Charging that she had “impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama,” the Republican got his colleagues to bar Warren from participating in the remainder of the debate. “She was warned,” McConnell announced. “She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” The majority leader had unwittingly created a meme; the “she persisted” line, which now adorns T-shirts, posters, and bumper stickers, became the preeminent rallying cry of 2017.

Warren plays defense brilliantly, as was evident when she shredded administration moves to derail the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But she’s best on offense: making monopolization of the economy a political issue, working with Senator Bernie Sanders to get Democrats on board for single-payer health care, and successfully amending the National Defense Authorization Act to require an annual report detailing civilian casualties resulting from US military operations.

Most Valuable House Progressive
JAN SCHAKOWSKY

The Illinois Democrat finished 2017 by ripping GOP tax policies with seasonally appropriate verse (“’Twas the Night Before Tax Scam”) that concluded by warning Paul Ryan, “There’s nowhere to hide, / There’s no ‘cover your ass,’ / When you choose to take sides / Against the middle class.” A product of the Prairie State’s rough-and-tumble politics, Schakowsky knows how to fight—but she does so with a humor and humanity that’s often missing from congressional clashes. This has made her a leading figure in both the House Democratic Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She kept her party united on votes to preserve the Affordable Care Act and to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. But Schakowsky didn’t stop there; she waded into every debate, leading the charge to protect the Children’s Health Insurance Program, cut prescription-drug prices, preserve net neutrality, defend immigrants, and expand protections for women in the workplace.

Most Valuable House Newcomer
RO KHANNA

Capitol Hill’s steadiest champion of congressional oversight on war-making, Representative Barbara Lee always needs allies. She got a great one when Khanna arrived in January. Lee’s fellow California Democrat jumped into a leadership post with the Congressional Progressive Caucus (as did two other outstanding newcomers, Washington’s Pramila Jayapal and Maryland’s Jamie Raskin) and emerged as a savvy champion of net neutrality. But the law-school instructor made his boldest mark as an advocate for the restoration of constitutional checks and balances. Khanna decried the use of tax dollars to “bomb and starve civilians” in Yemen and-- working with CPC co-chair Mark Pocan and libertarian-leaning Republicans-- drafted legislation to block US support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal assault on that country. In November, Khanna and his allies forced a debate on the issue, getting the chamber to vote 366–30 for a nonbinding resolution stating that US military assistance for the Saudi war was not authorized by Congress. That was a small step. But with support growing for Lee’s effort to overturn the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which has served as an excuse for military adventurism, Khanna says the Yemen vote signals that the project of “re-orienting our foreign policy away from our Saudi alliance and away from neocon/neoliberal interventionism” is finally beginning.

Most Valuable Mayor
CARMEN YULÍN CRUZ

Puerto Rico is not allowed to send voting representatives to the US Congress. But after Hurricanes Irma and Maria swept through the Caribbean, San Juan’s mayor refused to allow the federal government to neglect the people of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Her objection to claims that bumbling recovery efforts were somehow going smoothly drew the ire of President Trump, but Cruz did not back down. “The Trump administration can’t handle the truth,” she declared. Addressing the president directly, Cruz said: “Mr. Trump, do your job. Lives are at stake. This is not about politics. This is not about your ego. This is about the people of Puerto Rico and the [Virgin Islands].” Her advocacy got national attention and helped secure vital aid, as officials recognized the truth of Cruz’s assertion that “survival cannot be our new way of life.”

Most Valuable Inside/Outside Progressive
BERNIE SANDERS

Polls identify him as the nation’s most popular prominent political figure, and Sanders used that popularity to build movements in 2017. The Vermonter did plenty of work in the Senate: introducing Medicare for All legislation that drew unprecedented support, and grilling Trump cabinet picks like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whom he asked: “Do you think, if you were not a multibillionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today?” Outside Washington, Sanders rallied red-state voters against Trump’s agenda, defending the Affordable Care Act at “Care Not Cuts” rallies in Kentucky and West Virginia; barnstormed across Pennsylvania and Ohio on a “Protect Working Families” tour sponsored by MoveOn.org and Not One Penny to oppose the GOP tax bill; and helped Indiana steelworkers expose the administration’s failure to advance fair trade. Sanders also marched in favor of union rights in Mississippi with thousands of United Auto Workers activists, civil-rights campaigners, and members of the new Good Jobs Defenders coalition.

Most Valuable Union
AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION

If you want to see solidarity in action, consider the response of the union that represents more than 200,000 US Postal Service employees and retirees to last summer’s Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. APWU president Mark Dimondstein explained to his members that rallying “for equality and against the hate-mongers” is essential union work. “What does all this have to do with the APWU? Everything!” argued Dimondstein. “Fascists are bitter enemies of workers and our unions. Their race and religious bigotry, intimidation, and violence are a direct threat to our unity and ability to stand up and fight back to save the public Postal Service, win good contracts, gain better working conditions, enjoy a better life, and live in a more just society.”

There's lots more. I want to mention I have two runners-up with Ro Khanna for most valuable House freshman: Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin. Next year I'll look forward to seeing Randy Bryce on the list.